After almost a year of changes, Warner Bros. Discovery is about to finish its $81 billion merger with Paramount Skydance next week.
On Thursday evening, Nasdaq and S&P Dow Jones Indices announced which companies will replace Warner Bros. Discovery in their main indexes. Moderna will join the Nasdaq 100 before markets open on October 9, and Twilio will enter the S&P 500 before trading starts on October 6.
Before markets opened on Friday, shares of both Moderna and Twilio went up slightly. Index futures also increased ahead of the September jobs report. When a stock joins a major index, demand often rises because funds that track the index need to buy shares. Warner Bros. will leave both the Nasdaq and S&P indexes once its merger with Paramount is complete, which both companies say should happen on October 6.
Moderna is joining the Nasdaq 100 after a strong year for its stock, which has risen a lot through Thursday. In August, shares more than doubled in one day after Moderna and Merck’s experimental cancer vaccine showed good results in a Phase 3 trial.
